


Firemoon

by thismomentintime



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-13 06:13:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 12,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13564548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thismomentintime/pseuds/thismomentintime
Summary: A mysterious company of wanderers shows up in the village where Tauriel lives. As she gets to know them, a lot of forgotten feelings come to the surface, but her foster-father Thranduil makes it impossible for her to find out what exactly is going on between her and Kíli.





	1. Strangers in town

**Author's Note:**

> This work is originally written in my first language (Dutch), so please point out any mistakes since my English is far from perfect! I hope you'll enjoy reading it, and thanks for even giving it a try, it means a lot to me <3

Hearing the music immediately brought a smile upon Tauriel’s face.  
‘Could that be the gypsies?’ she asked Legolas. ‘It actually sounds very good.’  
Legolas raised an eyebrow at her unbelievingly. ‘Are you kidding me? They sound terrible. Those gypsies are nothing but trouble. Dad’s going to have his hands full with it.’  
‘Shall we have a look?’ Tauriel proposed enthusiastically.  
Legolas’ gaze got even darker. ‘Are you out of your mind? Come on, let’s go home.’  
But Tauriel didn’t feel like going home just yet. She was way too curious at the gypsies and the flurries of music that sounded a few streets ahead. ‘Go ahead,’ she said. ‘I’ll be on my way soon, okay?’  
‘You’re not going to – ‘  
‘No, I have to buy some bras,’ she quickly made up.  
She could see that Legolas didn’t believe her, but the idea of having to go into a lingerie store with her seemed to frighten him enough to do something about it. ‘Okay, then. But please get home before dark. And be careful.’  
At that moment she realized that her foster brother’s overly worriedness was always well-meant, and that he was only being such a nuisance because he cared about her. She smiled at him. ‘That’s fine. I’ll see you later.’  
He turned around and Tauriel watched his tall, elegant posture with the blond hair waving behind him walk away. Then she strolled into the center of the small village she lived in, following her ears to the cheerful gypsy-music that didn’t at all sound what she’d consider gypsy-like.

They were standing in front of the bakery and there were only two of them: one was blond and the other one was dark-haired. Both boys were quite tiny but of about the same age as her and Legolas, Tauriel estimated. They wore simple, brown and black clothes, with hair that reached their shoulders, and they were playing a guitar and a violin – at first sight a strange combination, but oddly enough they made it sound perfect.  
The dark-haired boy lifted his gaze while playing the last note, and Tauriel froze when his brown eyes met her green ones. For a moment, her heart and the world seemed to stand still. He winked at her with a mischievous but extremely cute smile. Quickly, Tauriel looked the other way.  
Suddenly, she felt a hand on her shoulder and alarmed she turned around.  
‘What do you think of it?’  
Just a few centimeters from her, a man was standing, dressed in the same simple clothes as the street musicians, with an enormous black and gray beard and a potato-like nose. A huge and deep scar disfigured his forehead.  
‘Umm… It’s beautiful,’ Tauriel said quickly. He was a type of person you’d rather not get in trouble with.  
‘Then you’d better give some money,’ the man said in a threatening tone.  
Tauriel knew she couldn’t do that. It was bad enough that she was listening, if her foster father heard about that it would make him angry enough. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have any money with me,’ she swiftly lied.  
The man’s gaze got even more threatening. ‘Then be gone, you have no business here. How rude of you, to just come and listen to our music without paying for it.’  
Tauriel mumbled an apology and quickly left the corner, careful not to look at the spot where the two musicians had started a new song in the meantime.


	2. The mayor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next chapter already, enjoy!

All the way home, her cheeks kept burning and she couldn’t get the image of the winking musician from her mind. Her thoughts were so preoccupied that she almost got herself knocked over by a car, and when she entered her house, she didn’t even hear Legolas call from the living room.  
‘Hellooo! Are you still there?’ he shouted when he went after her into the kitchen.  
He startled her. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘Good afternoon to you, too.’  
‘You’re back early,’ Legolas noticed.  
‘Hmm,’ Tauriel replied vaguely. ‘I still had to cook. And they didn’t really have anything nice anyway. Do you know when Thranduil is coming back tonight?’  
Legolas gazed at the clock, which told him it was a few minutes before half past four, and shrugged. ‘He didn’t say anything about it this morning. You’d better assume it’s gonna be late. Yesterday, he’s non-stop been complaining about those gypsies and all the work that getting rid of them is gonna cost, so in any case I don’t expect him before seven.’  
Tauriel nodded. ‘Why do they want to send them away?’ she asked after a short silence in which she had taken two pans from the cupboard.  
Legolas laughed mockingly. ‘Is that a serious question, Tau? No single municipality wants gypsies in their area, they bring tremendous troubles with them!’  
‘Why?’ Tauriel asked, meanwhile searching for a jar of pasta. ‘Maybe they’ll behave very decent. It’s not fair to chase them away immediately, is it? They aren’t welcome anywhere, isn’t that sad?’  
Legolas shook his head laughingly. ‘Which mayor is gonna be believable if he says “Okay, let’s give those gypsies a chance,” and thereafter the whole town suffers from begging and theft?’  
Tauriel shrugged, stubborn. ‘What’s so bad about a couple of buskers? Why do we have to assume that they’ll be stealing and begging?’ She tried not to think about the creepy man who tried to rid her of her money and instead envisioned the sweet smile of the dark-haired gypsy again.  
Legolas sighed, shook his head again and left Tauriel alone with her pasta.  
She put on the radio on top of the oven and hummed along softly while cutting some vegetables. Her slender, pale fingers worked quickly and her long, fiery red hair fell in waves over her back while she stood there swinging absentmindedly.

Thranduil didn’t get home before a quarter to eight.  
‘I put a plate of pasta in the microwave for you,’ Tauriel said as he walked through the hall to the living room.  
‘Thank you,’ he said, but as usual it sounded stiff and more like a obligatory nicety than like an expression of genuine gratitude. He walked straight into the kitchen without saying any more.  
Mayor Thranduil looked a lot like his son: he had the same tall, slender posture and sleek blond hair which reached to his lower back, although his nose was a lot longer and his eyes were colder. In terms of personality, however, the two of them were vastly different: while Legolas was friendly and caring, Thranduil was always working and calculating in everything he did.  
When he’d found Tauriel, a three year old girl back then, by herself at the side of the highway, he took her home out of a sense of duty, but when nobody ever came to pick her up and she and his son Legolas had grown inseparable, he reluctantly took her in as his foster daughter. He had never been like a real father to her, however. She was grateful, of course, but their relationship wasn’t a loving one and it didn’t reach any farther than leaving food for him and supplying a place to live and an education for her.  
‘How were things today?’ asked Legolas when Thranduil walked back into the living room.  
He undid his tie and took a seat in his big leather chair. ‘A madhouse. It turns out that our unexpected guests aren’t gypsies, but some group of wanderers who don’t belong in any fixed category. They call themselves nomads,’ he sighed. ‘And apparently different rules apply to those kind of parties, so all the preparations we made yesterday have been for nothing.’  
Legolas gave his father a sympathetic look. ‘That sucks. So this whole week is gonna be extra hours?’  
Thranduil nodded, tired. ‘I’m afraid so.’  
‘Is this even possible?’ Legolas asked. ‘To say that they’re “nomads” and just get their way out of the laws like that?’  
Thranduil sniffed bitterly. ‘Sadly, it is. They are actually on their way to some place to found a city, believe it or not. I don’t trust those people for one bit, this whole case smells like a massive scam. Please do me a favour and keep away from this scum.’ He took the newspaper from the coffee table and disappeared behind it, non-approachable from that moment on.   
A strange feeling went through Tauriel upon realizing that the gypsies who weren’t actually gypsies wouldn’t be gone in two days, as she had expected. Judging from what she had just heard, it would take a few weeks before this group of strangers had to leave.  
The restless feeling didn’t go away all evening. She couldn’t concentrate on her math-assignments and the violist’s face kept haunting through her mind. What was wrong with her?

The rest of the evening, annoyance and frustration kept alternating each other, and knowing she couldn’t tell anyone about her confusing feelings for someone she didn’t even know, made her lose her mind. Legolas was both an amazing friend and brother, but this was something she could never talk about with him. She realized that that had never happened before. She had never been in love, so for that matter she had never missed a good girlfriend to share everything with. She wasn’t that much of a girly-girl, anyway – Legolas and her bow were enough to make her happy. After losing her parents at the age of three, she had never felt the need to let anyone, except for Legolas, into her life. People would only disappoint you, that was the first and most important life-lesson she had learned.  
With a sigh, Tauriel closed her math book and put on her pajamas. This wasn’t working anyway, she would continue tomorrow. It was still early, but she didn’t feel like doing anything and spent the rest of the evening with closed eyes in bed, listening to music that made her forget everything.


	3. Ghosts from the past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first chapters might have been a bit cheesy, but it turns out that not everything is like it seemed. Hopefully I'll have time for the next one (and the first real conversation) soon!

‘Is there something going on?’  
‘No, why?’ said Tauriel quickly – a little too quickly, actually.  
‘You’re so silent,’ Legolas said.  
Tauriel shrugged. ‘I’m just tired. And I think I screwed up my test.’  
‘English?’  
Tauriel nodded.  
‘That one wasn’t that hard, was it?’  
‘Please don’t say that,’ she mumbled. It was nothing like her to screw up tests, most definitely not when they were about languages, and she was a little mad at herself because of this bad move.  
‘You’re brooding about something,’ Legolas insisted. ‘You’ve been since yesterday evening.’  
Tauriel shrugged again and turned her gaze downwards, as if something very interesting was visible in her salad.  
But Legolas’ worried, almost fearful look hadn’t escaped her notice, and that look scared her. She knew what he was thinking about: that the last time she’d behaved this quiet and distant, was already ten years ago.  
It had took a long time before she started to function normally again after she’d lost her parents, and Legolas had helped her going through the whole process full of patience. She could understand how afraid it made him to see her fall back into that old state after all those years, although it was only a dash of what it had been like back then, and furthermore, she would lie if she said that it didn’t frighten her herself. She didn’t understand what made her feel this way all of a sudden, except the fact that she obsessively kept thinking about the violinist who wasn’t a gypsy, without any apparent reason. It was like she had met him before, and in her mind the bizarre idea formed that maybe she had known him during her life before Thranduil and Legolas, in that time which she had very carefully wiped from her memory and of which she now couldn’t remember a single thing, no matter how hard she tried.  
And no matter how much it frightened her, it was impossible for her to ignore this feeling. She had to talk to the boy before he would disappear again. She had to look for him and find out who he was and where he came from and if it was possible that he knew more about her and her past, no matter how idiotic that possibility might seem.

Still, she kept procrastinating the moment. She was scared, although she would never admit it – not even to herself. Instead of looking for the boy, like she had promised herself, she went to the gym directly after school.  
She’d always had a passion for archery, as long as she could remember. She didn’t even know how it started, only that all the improvised bows made of sticks and elastics with which she and Legolas constantly shot all kinds of objects through the living room made Thranduil lose his mind at a certain point, so on a certain Christmas Eve, he gave them both a real bow with real arrows and sent them to the gym. Both Tauriel and Legolas kept practicing archery ever since, often together but sometimes, like this afternoon, alone.  
Tauriel was glad that Legolas wasn’t with her this time. She was quite fond of time alone, and liked shooting in peace and quiet. The focus on her aim pushed the excess of thoughts to the back of her mind and the feeling of the muscles in her arm tightening and the control over the arrows had a calming effect on her.  
Hours passed before she finally hung away her bow and dusk had already fallen when she stepped outside.  
She saw him walking on the other side of the street and he crossed the road as soon as his gaze fell on her. Stiffened, she waited for him.


	4. Déjà vu

‘Aren’t you that girl from yesterday?’ he asked when he got nearer. It struck her that he was a whole head smaller than her.  
Tauriel nodded.  
‘Bifur didn’t scare you off, did he?’  
‘Bifur?’ she repeated, asking.  
‘That dude who tried to rid you some money. He can be quite intimidating, I know that,’ the guy explained.  
‘Oh, that one,’ said Tauriel. ‘No, it was okay. You played beautifully together.’  
He smiled the same mischievous but cute smile as last time. ‘Thank you.’  
‘How long are you guys planning on staying?’  
‘Well, that’s always unclear,’ the boy said cheerfully. ‘The municipality wants nothing more than to get rid of us, but we actually like this place, so we’ll stay as long as possible – or, we plan to, at the moment. Plans can change any moment, of course. But I have to say; your municipality consists of a bunch of idiots.’  
Tauriel couldn’t help it: a cautious smile pulled up the corners of her mouth. ‘My foster father is the mayor.’  
The boy didn’t seem to be ashamed; on the contrary, his mischievous grin grew even bigger. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult your family,’ he said lightheartedly. ‘So you were asking how long we’re staying to report it to the mayor? He sent you to spy?’ He wiggled his eyebrows.  
Tauriel started to laugh. ‘I was just sporting,’ she said with a gesture to the building behind her. ‘What are you doing here, by the way? Isn’t your camp at the other side of the village? Are you lost?’  
‘Not all those who wander, are lost,’ the boy noted wisely. ‘Look, the moon.’ He pointed at a spot above Tauriel’s head and as she looked up, she indeed saw the moon emerging from behind a cloud patch on the darkening sky.  
‘It’s almost a full moon,’ she said. ‘That’s a pity, now you can’t see the stars that well.’  
‘But the moon is so much more beautiful than the stars!’ the boy exclaimed. ‘I always thought it is a cold light. Remote and far away.’  
Tauriel looked at him full of surprise. ‘It is memory! Precious and pure.’ Tauriel had always had a predilection for the stars in the night sky.  
But the boy shook his head. ‘I saw a firemoon once. It was huge!’ He spread his arms to show how huge exactly. ‘We were traveling and the night fell, and there it appeared. Red and gold it was, it filled the sky. Amazing. If you ever see a firemoon, you’ll know better.’  
‘I’ll keep it at the stars,’ Tauriel said. ‘I have walked there sometimes,’ she pointed at the tips of the trees that arose behind the buildings. ‘Beyond the forest and up into the night. I have seen the world fall away, and the white light forever fill the air.’  
She wanted to ask him the question that was burning on her lips, the question that had made her afraid to go look for him, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, too scared for the answer. ‘I must be going home, before it gets entirely dark. My brother will be worried,’ she said instead.  
‘That could be a good idea,’ said the boy. ‘I’m afraid you’re not the only one with a worried brother. But it was nice to meet you. I’m Kíli, by the way.’  
His name didn’t ring a bell. ‘I’m Tauriel.’  
He grinned at her again. ‘Bye, Tauriel.’ As he walked away, he didn’t notice something falling out of his pocket on the road.  
‘You dropped something,’ Tauriel said. She kneeled to pick up the object, but he was faster.  
‘A stone?’ she asked, surprised.  
Kíli held the stone up in the last bit of daylight. ‘That’s not just a stone. It’s a runestone. If you read the runes and are the daughter of a mayor, you’ll be forever cursed.’ He looked at her with wiggling eyebrows.  
Tauriel laughed.  
‘Just joking. It’s a talisman.’ He reached out his hand and let her read the runes. ‘My mother gave it to me so that I can always come back whenever I’m wandering around without my brother. She thinks I’m reckless.’  
‘Are you?’ Tauriel asked.  
He shrugged. ‘Nah.’  
For a while, they just looked at each other, and then he broke the silence. ‘Bye, Tauriel.’  
‘Bye, Kíli. Don’t get lost.’  
He laughed. ‘Of course not.’  
She turned around and walked away, with the moon lighting op her pale skin. The déjà-vu-like feeling followed right behind her.


	5. The nomads

During the following days Tauriel barely saw Thranduil and she started to relax a bit more. Kíli and his friends were a noticeable presence in town, although she didn’t cross paths with the boy himself again. It turned out that the group didn’t cause that much nuisance, and the assumption that they would steal had been made way too hastily. They begged, played music and sold all kinds of self-made stuff door to door. Most villagers were curious at the newcomers and besides that, their stay made a good subject to gossip about, but troublesome was something they definitely were not.  
After mulling over the situation a lot, Tauriel decided she wanted to find out if her gut feeling was true and if she indeed knew Kíli from somewhere. She didn’t fool herself and she knew that during their first conversation she had been to cowardly to ask him about it, but slowly her curiosity started winning from her fear and she realized that she couldn’t bury her head in the sand and act like the first three years of her life had never existed much longer.  
So on her next free Saturday she went on her way to the camp of Kíli and his family, after telling Legolas she was going for a run. She did feel a little bit guilty about lying to him, but the truth was impossible to tell. He would never let her go, given the fact that Thranduil didn’t trust the nomads one bit and clearly forbade both of them to get close to the camp.

The community was made up of about fifteen wagons, pulled by horses, who were standing in a field near the woods. It seemed like every wagon was inhabited by one family, and together they formed some kind of travelling village. Although they weren’t gypsies, they lived in the same old-fashioned way, and Tauriel felt like she was stepping back in time by the view of the camp.  
Again, she met Kíli by accident: he was just coming out of the forest with a pile of wood in his arms, together with his blond friend whom she had seen playing guitar in town.  
‘Tauriel! What are you doing here?’ Kíli asked, surprised.  
‘I was jogging,’ she said, with a quite needless gesture to her training suit. Her hair formed a messy bun on her head.  
‘Ah, I see,’ said Kíli sheepishly. ‘By the way, this is my brother, Fíli. Fíli, this is Tauriel, the mayor’s spy.’  
Tauriel was surprised to hear that the two guys were brothers. Except for their striking smallness they had truly nothing in common: Fíli was blond and blue-eyed, with a pretty big nose and his skin was a few shades paler than his brother’s.  
The blond boy looked at her full of suspicion. ‘The mayor’s spy, very well,’ he said without blinking even once.  
Tauriel smiled. ‘I promise I’m not here to spy. I just came to say hi,’ she told Kíli.  
‘Well, okay, I believe you,’ Kíli said with a wink. ‘Do you dare to come with?’  
‘Sure,’ she said. She decided it wasn’t necessary to tell that her heart was beating in her chest and her hands were sweaty.

She followed the boys into the camp, where most people were sitting in the grass in front of their wagons. A group of women was chatting while doing handicrafts and a few meters further, two boys were sitting talking and laughing together. The horses were standing in a fenced off part of the meadow and were kept company by the wild-looking man who Tauriel recognized as Bifur and a fat, ginger dude. She noticed that all the men had exceptionally long hair and big beards, and everyone was wearing the same kind of simple clothes.  
Fíli and Kíli dumped their branches in the middle of the circle of wagons and while Tauriel followed the brothers further, she checked if Fíli gave her the same déjà-vu-like feeling as Kíli, which wasn’t the case.  
‘Shall I show you our home?’ asked Kíli.  
She nodded. ‘Yes, please,’ said she.  
‘I think our mum’s inside, then you can meet her as well.’  
That idea gave Tauriel a clump of tension in her stomach.  
Fíli and Kíli walked towards one of the bigger wagons and Kíli put the curtain in front of the door aside for her.  
‘Hey mum, we took a guest with us,’ he meanwhile announced over his shoulder. ‘She’s the mayor’s spy.’  
‘Please stop that!’ said Tauriel, half laughing, and then she entered a small, cozy room, filled with a table and a couch secured to the wall, with on the other wall a stove and a bunch of kitchen cabinets.  
At the table, a small woman with exactly the same hair as Kíli’s, was knitting. When she looked up and saw Tauriel, a strange expression flew over her face, as if something she saw freaked her out, but immediately after that she smiled kindly and said: ‘Hi, I’m Dís,’ and Tauriel decided that she’d probably imagined it.  
Quickly, Tauriel shook her hand and introduced herself.  
Upon hearing her name, Dís frowned. She opened her month for a second, but then seemed to change her mind and closed it again.  
Hesitating, Tauriel wondered if maybe she hadn’t imagined that strange look on her face.  
‘Do you often get visited by people from outside your camp?’ Tauriel asked, thinking that it could be very weird for her to come here, and that that might be the reason for Dís’ still inquisitive look.  
‘No, never, actually,’ said Fíli. ‘Typically Kíli, to befriend the mayor’s daughter.’  
‘I’m not –‘ Tauriel didn’t finish her sentence, not knowing whether she wanted to say that she wasn’t Kíli’s friend or that she wasn’t the mayor’s daughter.  
Dís’ staring gaze changed into one of suspicion. ‘You’re the mayor’s daughter?’  
‘Well, not exactly,’ Tauriel said, hesitating. She wondered if it would make her mad to hear that a family member of the person who tried to drive her community away was in her home. ‘I’m his foster daughter, to be precise.’  
Dís didn’t reply and Tauriel lowered her gaze to the table top, feeling awkward.  
‘Come on, let’s go outside again,’ said Kíli, who seemed to sense that Tauriel didn’t feel comfortable. ‘I can show you the horses, if you want to.’  
Relieved, Tauriel agreed to that and followed Kíli outside again.  
But he didn’t go to the horses – instead he took her wrist and pulled her with him to the trees. At the touch of his hand, Tauriel felt a kind of electric shock going through her.  
‘Come on,’ he said again, and he pulled himself up in a firm tree out of the field’s sight. He turned around and helped her up, although she could have climbed into it by herself just as easily.  
‘What’s this about?’ asked Tauriel when they were sat on a big branch next to each other.  
‘Because I wanted to get to know you better,’ said Kíli, without any detours. ‘I feel like I’ve met you before, but that’s impossible. I mean, I’ve never even been in the proximity of this town before.’  
For a moment, Tauriel couldn’t say a word and just stared at Kíli.


	6. Erebor

When she found her voice again, Tauriel admitted: ‘I had the exact same feeling with you, as if everything is one big déjà-vu. But who knows if we’ve met before. Maybe we just can’t remember.’  
Kíli looked at her, frowning. ‘Do you really think so?’  
Tauriel felt that she started to blush and shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ Now she could say it, that she hadn’t been living here forever and that there were three years from her life which were missing completely – but she couldn’t get the words over her lips.  
At her surprise, Kíli came with an incentive himself. ‘You keep saying that the mayor is your foster father. What happened to your own parents, if I may ask?’  
Tauriel perceived that she couldn’t look at him any longer and turned her gaze to the ground a few meters beneath her feet. ‘I don’t know,’ she candidly admitted, with a soft voice. ‘Thranduil found me when I was about three years old near a gas station at the highway and took me home with him, to temporarily take care of me. But they never came to get me.’  
Kíli looked at her, more earnest than she’d ever seen him. ‘But… You could tell him yourself where you came from, couldn’t you?’  
Tauriel shook her head, still not able to look into his eyes. ‘I didn’t speak. The only thing I said was that my name was Tauriel, nothing else. Thranduil had no idea what to do with me, but Legolas immediately loved me like I were his sister. He has always been there for me.’  
‘So Legolas is your foster brother?’  
Tauriel nodded.  
‘And why didn’t you speak?’  
She shrugged. ‘I don’t remember anything from the time before I was living with Thranduil. The doctors said I was traumatized. No one could get me to talk. Now I don’t even know it myself anymore.’ Finally, she dared to look up to him, and saw that his brown eyes were wide open.  
‘Do you think… that we…’  
‘That we knew each other back when we were little lids?’ she finished his sentence.  
He nodded.  
‘At first, I thought it was completely ridiculous. Then it slowly seemed to become more logical. At one side, I want to know, but I’m scared too. Anything can have happened to me. I probably didn’t ban it from my mind for nothing. I probably didn’t keep silent all that time for nothing. So maybe it’s better to not know. But at the same time, I don’t want to walk away from it any longer.’  
Kíli nodded slowly. ‘I understand. I have to admit that my mum wasn’t acting completely normal just yet.’  
‘Do you mean she could have recognized me?’  
‘I don’t know,’ Kíli sighed. ‘It all seems such a long shot.’  
Tauriel nodded. ‘But you have no idea what it can be?’  
He shook his head, apologetic. ‘I’ve been tormenting my brain for days, but it’s like a kind of memory that keeps slipping away juts when you almost remember it.’  
‘What about your dad, won’t he know something?’  
Suddenly, his face turned unreadable. ‘He’s dead,’ he said, bluntly.  
Tauriel didn’t know what to say. She swallowed and sought for words. ‘I’m sorry,’ she finally managed to utter.  
He shrugged. ‘It was a long time ago,’ he said. ‘I can’t even remember him.’  
‘What happened to him? Was he ill?’  
He shook his head. ‘It was a fight with some circus artists that got out of hand.’  
‘That’s horrible,’ Tauriel mumbled.  
Kíli forced a smile. ‘It’s not that bad. What happened, happened. I still got my uncle. He’s like a father to me.’  
‘Does he live in your camp as well?’  
Kíli nodded. ‘He’s the leader.’  
‘I’d like to meet him,’ said Tauriel. ‘What’s your life like, by the way? Thranduil told me you’re nomads, but what does that even mean?’  
The happy twinkle returned to Kíli’s eyes and he started to talk enthusiastically. ‘We’re looking for a place to live, that’s what it all comes down to. We’re a very close community and we want to found a city somewhere. We’ve been traveling for generations, looking for the suitable place.’  
Tauriel could hardly understand it. ‘So you’re just wandering around and at some point you’re going to say “this is a good place, let’s found a city”?’  
‘Kind of, yes. The place where the city must be depends on all kinds of conditions, which the leader – my uncle – keeps an eye on. But it takes a long time to find that spot.’  
‘And who has determined those conditions?’ asked Tauriel.  
‘The very first nomad, a really long time ago. There’s all kinds of legends around it, about how we were chased away from our city by a dragon and that kind of nonsense, and that we have to retrace the exact place where our city once was. Apparently, it was called Erebor. I hope that I’ll still be here when we finally find our city, that must be amazing.’  
Tauriel listened intrigued. ‘It sounds exciting,’ she said. ‘Are there a lot of nomadic groups like that? I’ve never heard of anything like this before.’  
Kíli shook his head. ‘We’re extremely rare. But I do think that our way of life is loads better than living in a home and having to go to school every day, or to an office. We’re always outside, we live as one big, close-knit family, and the work we have to do may be heavy, but at least it’s fun.’  
Tauriel’s next question got interrupted by the sound of her phone ringing. It was Legolas, so she’d better not ignore it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled to Kíli before picking up.  
‘Is something wrong?’  
‘Where are you?’  
‘Running, I told you that, didn’t I?’  
‘Still?’  
‘Yes, what did you think?’  
‘No, never mind, it just took a little long. Are you coming home soon?’  
She sighed, but no matter how irritating it might be, she had to admit that it was sweet of him to be so worried about her. It was hard for her to get mad at Legolas anyway.  
‘Okay, I think I’ll be back in about ten minutes.’ She hung up and told Kíli: ‘I’m sorry, that was my brother. He wants me to come home.’  
‘I caught that. You should go.’  
‘Sorry, I didn’t want to – ‘  
‘No, it’s alright. You can return tomorrow.’  
She bit her lip. ‘I don’t know if that’s possible. If Thranduil and Legolas find out that I’m here, I’ll really be in a lot of trouble.’  
Kíli looked disappointed. ‘I understand.’ He thought for a moment and then his face lit up again. ‘Can’t you say you’re at a friend’s house or something?’  
‘I don’t have any friends,’ said Tauriel without prevaricating.  
‘None at all?’ Kíli asked, surprised.  
She shook her head. ‘Legolas is enough for me,’ she said curtly.  
Luckily, he didn’t ask any more about it, but jumped down agilely, and Tauriel gracefully followed.  
For a moment, they kept standing in front of each other, a little ill at ease. Tauriel’s heart was beating irregularly. Actually it was kind of cute that he was so tiny, she suddenly thought.  
‘Well, see you,’ he suddenly said. ‘Monday, right?’  
Tauriel nodded. ‘I think so.’  
He turned around and walked back to the camp. With a strange, empty feeling in her stomach, she watched him go. Then she turned around as well and jogged away.


	7. Not alone

Someone knocked on Tauriel’s door. ‘Can I come in?’  
She rose up on her bed and pulled a hand through her hair. ‘Yes, sure,’ she said.  
It was Legolas. With his arms crossed, he stood still in the doorway.  
‘What’s up?’  
‘That’s exactly what I wanted to ask you.’  
‘What do you mean?’ She tried to keep her face neutral, but noticed that she didn’t do a very good job at that.  
‘Tauriel, please,’ he sighed. He stopped leaning against the doorway and sat down on the end of her bed. ‘The last time you were behaving this way is almost ten years ago. You’re keeping something from me. But you can tell me anything, you know that, don’t you? If you’re having a relapse, for any kind of reason, if you’re remembering things that weren’t there before, if you’re afraid of anything – please tell me.’  
Tauriel swallowed and cast down her eyes. Legolas was right; she couldn’t keep things from him. She never had and she would never want to. ‘Can you promise that you won’t get mad at me?’ she asked, reluctant.  
‘Why would I get mad at you?’  
‘Because I’ve gone looking for the nomads,’ she confessed.  
Legolas frowned, astonished. ‘Why did you… You know that that’s dangerous!’  
‘It’s not dangerous,’ said Tauriel defensive. ‘It’s not like their criminals or anything, they’re very nice people!’  
‘They are the reason that dad works more than he sleeps this week!’  
‘I know, but that’s not their fault! They have to live somewhere!’  
‘Tauriel, dad is – ‘  
‘You said you wouldn’t get mad!’  
Legolas narrowed his gray eyes. ‘Then first tell me what exactly you were looking for down there.’  
Tauriel took a deep breath. ‘My past.’ Too late, she realized how dramatic that sounded.  
Non-comprehending, her foster brother stared at her, and then Tauriel told him everything: how she had first seen Kíli when he was playing music in town, how he had aroused all kinds of confusing feelings in her, how she had gotten the idea that maybe he was a part of her lost past, and how she finally had decided that she wanted to know what was going on and had gone to the camp. ‘I have the right to know the truth!’ she ended her story, defensively.  
Legolas’ face was unreadable, but he slowly nodded. ‘I do understand it,’ he said. ‘Of course you want to know what’s going on, that makes sense. But please be realistically: how big is the chance really that you actually knew this guy?’  
‘Kíli also had the idea that he knew me before. And his mother reacted really strange when she met me,’ said Tauriel. ‘I have to know! No matter what you think of it, I’m going back, and I’m going to find out. You don’t have to agree with me, but please, will you not tell Thranduil?’  
Legolas took some time to think about her words. ‘I get that you want to know. I’m coming with you.’  
Flabbergasted, Tauriel looked at him. ‘Are you serious?’  
‘Of course. You’re right: you have the right to know the truth. But then I want to be there for you, just in case… Just in case you need me.’  
Gratefully, Tauriel smiled at him. She couldn’t express you thankful she was for him. It was nothing for Legolas to ignore his father’s commands like that and to do things behind his back, and this support from him meant a lot to her. ‘You don’t have to do this,’ she told him.  
The smile he gave her was a sad one. ‘I know. I want to do this, okay?’  
She nodded. ‘Okay. But prepare for a not too warm welcome, being the mayor’s son.’


	8. The second visit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel finally meets Thorin!

On Sunday, however, they couldn’t go: in this week it was Thranduil’s only day off, and they didn’t dare to take the risk as long as he was home and could ask them where they were going. So Tauriel sat around, did a few weak attempts to make some homework and finally started to vacuum-clean the house out of pure misery. It seemed to take ages before the day was over, and meanwhile Kíli didn’t leave her thoughts for one moment. She saw him clearly in her head, from the stubbles on his cheeks to his rough working-hands, and his mischievous grin was at the forefront of her mind.

The Monday that followed went by just as hazy and sluggishly, with a lot of absent-minded looks out of the window and a total lack of concentration.  
When finally the last bell rang, Tauriel jumped out of her chair. ‘Thank God,’ she sighed to Legolas.  
He grinned. ‘Such a hurry,’ he remarked.  
‘Come on.’ She almost hauled him from his chair and pulled him with her out of the school.  
‘Do you know where he is?’ asked Legolas while they were hastily walking through the center of town in the direction of the nomads’ camp.  
‘No, he can be anywhere,’ answered Tauriel. ‘But we can just go to the camp and if he isn’t there we can wait for him. Maybe his mother will let something slip as well. I bet she knows more.’  
‘Tauriel,’ said Legolas hesitatingly. ‘You do understand that there’s a pretty big chance that there’s nothing to discover at all, don’t you?’  
She felt a blush spreading on her cheeks. ‘Yes, of course,’ she quickly said.  
‘Good,’ said Legolas. ‘I just don’t want you to get too excited. Suppose that there’s nothing actually going on… You have to be prepared for that, too.’  
Tauriel nodded. ‘I know.’  
They reached the camp, where the atmosphere was just as calm as on Saturday.  
A man with long black curls with some gray wisps in them came coursing toward them. His posture enforced a natural respect and Tauriel and Legolas held still, reluctant to go on.  
‘What are you doing here?’ the man asked, threatening, with a deep, rumbling voice.  
‘We come for Kíli,’ said Tauriel.  
Now that the man was closer she saw that his face looked a lot like Fíli’s, and she supposed that this was Kíli’s uncle, the leader of the group.  
His strikingly blue eyes locked into Tauriel’s. ‘And why is that?’ he asked, suspiciously.  
‘We’re friends of Kíli,’ she answered, conveniently ignoring the fact that Kíli and Legolas had never met each other before.  
Distrusting, the man looked from Legolas to Tauriel. ‘You look an awful lot like that funky mayor of yours,’ he said to Legolas in a hostile voice.  
Legolas set a step forward, pissed off. ‘So what? You’re the intruders here, and you have the guts to call my father funky? And I’m not welcome here, just because my father’s the mayor?’ he said, with his eyes narrowed.  
Tauriel grabbed him at his wrist.  
‘Tauriel!’  
She looked around and saw Kíli walking up to them. Relieved, she breathed out.  
Kíli’s gaze immediately turned to her hand around Legolas’ wrist and she quickly let go of him.  
‘And who are you?’ he asked Legolas in a hostile tone.  
‘This is Legolas,’ Tauriel introduced him swiftly. ‘Legolas, this is Kíli.’  
They didn’t shake each other’s hands, but Legolas looked down to him disdainfully and Kíli, though he was almost two heads smaller, gave him a look just as dirty. The tension was almost tangible.  
‘Kíli, what have you been up to this time?’ asked the man whom Tauriel assumed was his uncle gruffly.  
‘Easy, Thorin, it’s no problem. Tauriel is a friend. She’s been here on Saturday as well.’  
‘Since when do we take people from outside to our camp?’  
Tauriel admired the fact that Kíli didn’t let his uncle intimidate him.  
‘Since they’re our friends and since we are to treat them as our guests,’ he said, calmly. ‘Where’s mum?’  
‘In the camp.’  
Kíli wanted to walk on, but before Tauriel and Legolas could follow him, Thorin stopped Legolas by putting a hand on his chest. ‘If that father of yours has anything to do with this, you’ll regret ever setting one foot over the doorstep,’ he told him, threateningly.  
Legolas grinned scornfully. ‘Even if you had a doorstep, I could hardly regret walking around on my own father’s grounds,’ he said, mocking. ‘I have nothing to do with my father’s plans.’  
Thorin let them pass, but not without gazing after them full of mistrust.


	9. Searching for the truth

‘Kíli?’  
He looked up to her and Tauriel took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t just come back for fun. I want to know if there’s indeed been a connection between us. I’m ready to know all about it. Do you want to help me find out?’ Her heart was beating in her chest, but she feared that that had little to do with her question and much more with the intensity of his gaze.  
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But why did he come with you?’ he added with another dirty look at Legolas.  
‘Because I’m her brother,’ said Legolas immediately. ‘I don’t want anything to happen to her.’  
‘Legolas,’ said Tauriel, in a soft and warning voice.  
He only raised an eyebrow at her.  
‘So, how do you want to tackle this?’ asked Kíli.  
‘Your mother knows more, do you think she’ll admit that if we just ask her?’  
‘If there’s more to know,’ Legolas added.  
Tauriel ignored him.  
‘It’s at least worth a try. My mum’s over there.’ Kíli gestured at his wagon, where Dís was sitting in a plastic chair in front of the door in the early spring sun. In her hands she had the same knitting as Saturday, and she didn’t look up before the trio was standing right before her.  
‘Hey, Tauriel,’ she said with a smile. ‘I see you brought someone with you.’  
‘I’m Legolas,’ said Legolas stiffly.  
Kíli sat down in the grass and Tauriel followed his example. After a short hesitation, Legolas gracefully lowered himself to the ground as well.  
‘We have to ask you something,’ Kíli started.  
Dís looked at her son in surprise. ‘I’ve never seen you so serious before,’ she said, teasingly.  
Kíli ignored her remark and started explaining the situation to her. ‘Tauriel can’t remember anything from the first three years of her life. But since the moment we first met, we both think that we actually could have known each other before. And you seemed to be a bit shocked by something when you met her two days ago. Tauriel wants to know if we know her.’  
Dís’ face was unreadable. To Tauriel, it felt like she kept silent for hours. Then her eyes wandered to Thorin, who was watching them carefully from a distance. ‘I’m not the person who should tell you this,’ she finally said. ‘Yes, I recognized Tauriel. At first, I thought I imagined it, but as soon as I heard her name, I knew she had to be it. I hoped that you wouldn’t make the link yourselves and that’s why I didn’t say anything about it. Tauriel, it’s better for you to not come here anymore.’  
‘So you know more?’ insisted Kíli eagerly.  
Dís sighed. ‘Kíli, please let it go,’ she said softly. ‘Things have happened that we aren’t proud of, you know that. Things that still sadden us. I can’t talk about it.’  
Holding her breath, Tauriel looked back and forth from Kíli to Dís.  
‘Why not?’ asked Kíli, but when Dís didn’t answer he started to guess. ‘Does it have something to do with Adad?’  
Abruptly, Dís picked her knitting back up. ‘I told you to let it go! Your dad is dead, nothing can change that.’  
‘But – ‘  
‘Time to go,’ said Dís rudely to Tauriel and Legolas. ‘You have no business coming here. Especially you,’ she added with a look at Tauriel.  
Kíli jumped up. ‘I’ll take you out,’ he said.  
‘But I – ‘  
‘Come on, time to go.’  
Tauriel couldn’t believe that she got dismissed like this just when the truth was getting so close. It was more than obvious that Dís knew more, and she blamed Kíli for letting them get rebuffed so easily.  
She turned to Dís. ‘This is about me. I have the right to know the truth,’ she said.  
‘I can assure you that the truth won’t make you any happier,’ the woman stubbornly said.  
Tauriel didn’t understand it. What did she do wrong? ‘But, ma’am – ‘  
‘Come, Tauriel,’ said Legolas softly.  
She knew he was right: Dís wouldn’t let anything slip. Feeling defeated, she got up and trudged behind the two guys.

But Kíli didn’t walk straight to the exit of the camp – he stopped at another, quite small wagon, and knocked on the door. ‘You didn’t think I’d give up that easily, did you?’ he said with a teasing smile.  
Tauriel felt her cheeks turning red. ‘No, of course not,’ she mumbled, somewhat embarrassed.  
‘If there’s anyone who can help us further, it’s Balin,’ Kíli explained in a low voice.  
Before she could ask who Balin was, the door opened, and in front of them an old man with a long white beard and a big nose was standing. Eagerly she followed Kíli inside. She felt Thorin’s eyes burn in her back from the other side of the field.  
‘Kíli, what a nice surprise,’ said the old man friendly. ‘And who are you guys? Would you like a cup of tea?’  
Tauriel and Legolas swiftly introduced themselves, and upon hearing Tauriel’s name, the old man looked at her incisively. He said nothing, however, and soon they were all sat around Balin’s small table with big mugs of tea in their hands.  
‘Do you remember Tauriel, Balin?’ asked Kíli, straightforward.  
Balin nodded, his eyes pressing into hers. ‘I was wondering what exactly you think you’re doing here, girl. I fear that most people won’t be exactly happy to see you.’  
Tauriel frowned. ‘Why not?’  
‘Why not? Well, child, that’s obvious, isn’t it, after everything that’s happened!’ Balin exclaimed in surprise. ‘Do they not tell the stories at your place? Do they act like nothing happened? And how do they explain the death of your parents, then?’


	10. Not a pretty story

It felt like Tauriel got kicked in the guts. She skewed her mug and spilled hot tea over her pants, but didn’t even notice it. Only Legolas stayed alert and took the mug out of her hands. While Kíli explained to Balin how it came that Tauriel knew nothing of the matter, Legolas put a comforting arm around her.  
The old man’s face fell. ‘I’m sorry, Tauriel. I supposed you already knew everything, and that you had come here to visit our Kíli again,’ he told her. Then he turned to Kíli. ‘So you want me to tell you what exactly happened thirteen, fourteen years ago?’  
Kíli nodded.  
‘It’s not a pretty story, boy. You probably already know most of it, but there are even things that you’ve never been told. I don’t want to cause a fight between you and your mum and uncle.’  
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Kíli hastily. ‘I want to know.’  
And so Balin started to tell. 

‘Fourteen years ago, we were living exactly like we do now. We moved around from place to place and almost always lived together peacefully with the permanent inhabitants of those places. At a certain point, we put up our camp next to one of a moving circus. It seemed like a good idea at first, but it turned out to be a fiasco. There were fights all the time, and it didn’t take long before everyone hated everyone; but our pride was in the way and neither of our communities wanted to be the one chased away by the other. Of course, there’s always one group that doesn’t give a damn about those fights.’ He fell silent and his gaze rested first on Kíli and then on Tauriel. ‘Little kids. You were about the same age and befriended each other at the moment when Kíli first came to have a look in the circus camp.’ Balin now turned to Kíli. ‘You were a tiny, inquisitive boy and you had disappeared on the sly to see all the strange animals on the other side of the field. While your parents were worried sick, you met the daughter of two tightrope-dancers, and at the time they found you and took you back to our own camp, you and Tauriel had fallen in love like only little kids can fall in love.’  
Tauriel’s gaze crossed Kíli’s and she felt her heart beat in her chest.  
‘While the fight between our camps developed, the two of you kept hanging out together in the forest behind the wagons. You drove both your parents crazy.’  
‘Balin, stop, we know enough.’ At Tauriel’s surprise, something in Kíli’s voice sounded panicked.  
‘No, this is only the beginning,’ she said eagerly.  
‘You don’t wanna know how it ends,’ Kíli said coldly.  
‘Kíli,’ said Balin in a tranquil voice. ‘She has the right to know.’  
‘Why did nobody ever tell me this?!’ Kíli exclaimed, though. ‘My mum recognized her, for God’s sake! She should’ve told me! Everyone knew who she was, except for me!’  
Balin put a calming hand on Kíli’s arm. ‘Boy, please don’t think too harshly of her. It’s hard for her too. I think that she didn’t know what to do just as well. It was a shock for her to see Tauriel again.’  
‘Will you please tell me what happened?’ insisted Tauriel, tense.  
Balin nodded and Kíli leaned back defeated, with a desperate look on his face.  
‘As the days passed, the fight got still more heated. And like always happens in fights, this one came to an outburst as well – in this case with playing children as the victims.’  
Tauriel started to feel sick and Legolas’ grip on her shoulder tightened.  
‘I remember hearing people shouting and of course we went to look what was going on. We encountered your parents, all four of them raging, with their own communities behind them and the two of you between them, caught in the crossfire. They accused each other of all sorts of things – what it came down to, was that everyone thought that the others had tried to take away their child and whatnot. It got completely out of hand. Before we knew it, Adad and the two rope-dancers were dead.’   
Horror filled Tauriel, but Balin’s story wasn’t finished yet. ‘Dís was just standing there, in a daze and not knowing how it could have come to that. And the two of you didn’t understand a thing of it, of course. I can still see how you kept clamping your mother, who of course didn’t get up again. We immediately packed and went away as soon as we could. Your people did the same thing. I think that everyone tried to forget about it as soon as possible.’

Blindly, Tauriel stared ahead. Although Balin’s story hadn’t awakened any real memories in her, she saw everything happen like a movie: two little children, only toddlers; a girl with fiery red hair and a boy with a mischievous grin, who were playing hide-and-seek amongst the wagons, without realizing that the game they were playing was a deadly one. She saw how the boy got taken away by his mother, crying, and how the girl remained there, not knowing that her parents would never wake up again. She saw how the wagons left, one by one, first the boy’s and then the girl’s, and how there was no one left to look after the girl, and how she herself didn’t understand that her parents weren’t there to carry her into her wagon anymore, so that she remained on the field, all on her own. She saw how the girl realized, after waiting for a long time, that no one would come to get her and give her food and bring her to bed, and how she thus started walking and didn’t stop walking until she reached a highway and got picked up by a tall man with blond hair, and how the circus artists realized way too late that night that they had forgotten the little girl with the red hair.

She noticed that Kíli was staring at her and for a moment, in a flash of her imagination, she saw the little boy with the mischievous grin right in front of her.  
‘I have to go,’ she abruptly mumbled. ‘You’re right, I shouldn’t be here. I have no business coming here.’  
‘Tauriel, wait,’ said Kíli. ‘You – ‘  
‘Come on, Legolas.’ She didn’t let Kíli finish his sentence but stood up hastily and was outside the wagon within a few steps. Without looking back, she coursed off the field, with Legolas behind her.  
While they were walking ahead in silence, the movie in Tauriel’s head continued. The little girl with the red hair ended up in a strange, big home, where a little boy with blond hair gave her a kiss on her cheek. She didn’t say a word about what she had seen and what she now had begun to understand. Nobody came to pick her up and no single municipal file knew about a lost girl named Tauriel. So she got a bed and a room of her own. She kept silent.  
From that moment on, the movie blended with real memories. The big man who wasn’t home much scared her, but the blond boy was sweet to her and held her hand. Doctors came to visit her, strange people in white coats and strange people in furry cardigans and strange people who patted her red hair reassuringly. And slowly, bit by bit, the little girl with the red hair began to talk, first to the blond boy and then to the teachers at school and then to the doctors and finally also to the tall man who almost never was in the big house. But about one thing she kept silent: where she was from.   
The little girl with the red hair grew up and became a tall girl with red hair, and her past which she kept silent about got forgotten, not only by her surroundings but by herself as well. And before she knew it, the boy with the mischievous grin was nothing but a hazy dream, the smell of the big circus tent was a vague imagination, and the bodies of her parents in the grass were a nightmare without any meaning, which in the end completely disappeared as well.


	11. Motion

Tauriel was a fighter. She was not used to giving up, so this time that wasn’t an option either – it didn’t even cross her mind that it would be a possibility. She went to school, made her homework, cooked every other day and regularly went to the gym to shoot. But she avoided the center of town and at home she locked herself in her bedroom. Never before had she understood the little girl with the red hair as well as at that time; talking just seemed so useless.  
She noticed that Legolas kept watching her closely, but she didn’t even attempt to make it seem like she was fine. Her heart didn’t leave any room for feeling guilty. It was like she had to grieve all over again, because she had lost her parents all over again. Half and half, she’d been hoping that she belonged at the nomad’s camp, maybe even a reunification with her nomad-parents, because there would be some kind of explanation for her disappearance from the camp.  
She was aware of Legolas seeing the younger version of herself returning, the traumatized girl who had all of a sudden landed into his home and whom he had healed with so much patience, and she knew that that scared him, but she didn’t have the energy to change anything about it. She felt like a ghostly impression of herself. Wounds that had been forgotten for a long while, had to heal again, and that would take time.

It wasn’t until two weeks later that she started coming back to her old self again, when Thranduil came home one night and sat down at the dinner table with a satisfied feature around his mouth.  
‘Well, the motion is through,’ he announced proudly.  
With a jerk, Tauriel looked up from her rice-filled plate. ‘The motion?’  
‘Yes. It was a terrible hassle, because those idiotic nomads don’t fall under any population group, but in the end we managed it and now all the bureaucratic fuss is finally done. Tomorrow we can send them away.’  
Tauriel’s gaze flashed to Legolas, who was sitting opposite her, but his head was bowed and he was staring at his cutlery.  
‘Tomorrow?’ Tauriel repeated.  
Thranduil nodded to confirm it. ‘In two days we are definitively released from their presence,’ he said proudly.  
During the rest of the meal, Tauriel finished her plate without saying another word. She thought about Kíli and how she had been avoiding him so carefully in the last two weeks. She didn’t know if he had been looking for her, but in any case he hadn’t found her.

As soon as the dishes were done, Tauriel disappeared into her room again. She dug into her closet looking for that one black hoodie she had, but before she found it there was a knock on her door and Legolas walked in.  
‘What are you doing?’ He closed the door behind him.  
‘Looking for something,’ she mumbled and disappeared into the closet again.  
‘Tauriel, I know what you’re up to.’  
Of course he knew. He always saw through her. With a sigh she closed the closet and looked him in the eyes. ‘I have to say goodbye,’ she said, resolute. ‘I can’t let him go just like that. Not… Not again.’ She swallowed the lump in her throat away and refused to let her emotions win from her.  
‘I get that,’ said Legolas calmly. ‘But it is no use to go now. It’s already dark outside, and it’s ridiculous to sneak out on the sly. Dad would want to know where we’re going.’  
‘We?’  
‘You didn’t think I’d let you go alone, now that they know who you are, did you?’  
Again, she felt an enormous gratefulness for Legolas. ‘Thank you,’ she mumbled, overwhelmed. ‘For everything.’  
He smiled, but it was a sorrowful smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘We’ll go tomorrow after school, alright?’  
She nodded. Legolas was right: it was useless to randomly run into the dark and crash into the camp like that.  
‘Dad said that the municipality will probably have all the paperwork they need in the afternoon and that they have twenty-four hours to leave from that moment on. So you can count on it that they’ll leave by Friday morning.’  
Tauriel nodded. ‘But what if Thranduil is also at the camp tomorrow afternoon? He has to take the paperwork to them, doesn’t he?’  
Legolas shrugged. ‘We’ll just have to take that risk.’  
She could barely believe that he truly wanted to take that risk for her. He was way too good to her.


	12. Goodbye

Kíli was standing at the side of the camp, talking to his brother, and as soon as she saw him, Tauriel started to run.  
He looked up and surprise lit up his face as he saw her coming. ‘Tauriel! I didn’t expect you here again!’  
‘Have you already heard?’ she asked.  
‘That because of you our father is dead?’ asked Fíli in a hostile voice. ‘Yes, we did. How dare you show your face here again?’  
‘Fíli,’ said Kíli to his brother in a warning tone. ‘Can I talk to her for a moment?’  
‘Go ahead. As if you haven’t caused enough damage already. But please make sure that Thorin doesn’t see it.’ With a grumpy look on his face, Fíli clumped away.  
‘I’m sorry,’ Kíli mumbled, ashamed. ‘They don’t all behave like this, believe me. He’ll come around for sure. But what did you wanna tell me?’  
‘You have to leave,’ said Tauriel quickly. ‘They’ll probably hand you the motion this afternoon and then you have to depart within twenty-four hours.’  
Kíli nodded calmly. Of course it wasn’t a complete surprise for him, it always played out like this wherever they were. ‘Come with me,’ he abruptly said.  
She stared at him, not knowing whether he was being serious. ‘What – don’t be an idiot, I can’t! I live here. And your people wouldn’t be okay with it anyway. I’m the enemy, remember?’  
‘I said, come with me, not with them. I know how I feel, I’m not afraid. You make me feel alive.’ He looked at her incisively and she knew that he meant every word of what he said.  
She didn’t know what to say. Then she saw, out of the corner of her eye, Legolas approaching, who had stayed behind when she started to sprint, and she overcame her torpor again. ‘You belong with your people,’ she said to Kíli.  
Legolas kept waiting somewhere behind them. She was grateful that he understood that this was a moment between the two of them.  
Kíli seemed to understand that his proposal was impossible. His face fell, but he slowly nodded. Then he stretched out his hand to her, and to her surprise she saw the runestone lie in his palm. ‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘As a promise.’  
She wanted to say that she couldn’t take it, but her voice didn’t cooperate and he pressed the stone into her hand. His hand felt warm and firm and she felt a shock go through her at his touch.  
He looked up at her and for a moment it seemed like he wanted to kiss her, but then he looked back and saw Fíli watching them from the camp. Abruptly, he turned around.  
While Tauriel watched him walk away from her, she felt a hand touching her shoulder cautiously.  
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said smothered while Legolas carried her away from the camp with some pressure. The runestone felt surprisingly warm between her fingers.  
‘Time to go back – ‘  
‘Legolas! Tauriel! What do you think you’re doing?!’  
They simultaneously turned around to see a furious Thranduil storming towards them. Tauriel felt all colour fade from her face.  
‘We – ‘  
‘Didn’t I tell you very clearly not to come near this place? What on earth were you doing here?’  
‘I – ‘  
‘Go home. Now. I’ll speak to you this evening.’  
‘Thranduil, we – ‘  
With a furious movement of his head he silenced her. The look in his eyes was colder than ever.  
Legolas took her with him in the direction of the village, past the two civil servants who were with Thranduil and sent them puzzled looks.  
The thought that it was her fault that Legolas had violated Thranduil’s trust for the first time in his life, was laying as a rock in her stomach and she could barely look at his guilt-stricken face.

They didn’t start talking before they got home.  
‘I’m sorry,’ said Tauriel, almost in a begging tone.  
Legolas plunked into a chair in the living room. ‘Dad must be furious,’ he said bleakly.  
‘And with good reason, actually,’ mumbled Tauriel. ‘He did tell us to stay away from them.’  
‘What are you going to tell him?’  
Tauriel shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, candidly. ‘I mean, maybe I should just tell him the truth, but – ‘  
The doorbell interrupted her doubting and quickly, Tauriel got up.  
She walked through the hall and unlocked the front door, flabbergasted to see Fíli standing before her.


	13. A quandary

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, completely astonished.  
‘I have to talk to you,’ said Fíli. He sounded like he was out of breath and Tauriel realized he had come running.  
‘About what?’  
‘Listen, I know this sounds weird, but I can’t let Kíli just leave you like that. He cares about you. And no matter how ridiculous I think that is, I’m still his brother. I’ve talked to my mum and my uncle and they forgave you for what happened. They understand that they can’t blame a three-year-old kid for that. You’re allowed to come with us. We leave early tomorrow morning.’  
‘I – ‘  
‘I know that I’ve been kind of a jerk just yet, but please forget about that. And of course you have a lot to give up if you join us, but please, at least consider it. This isn’t your life, Tauriel.’  
The fact that he called her by her name worked, in a strange way, clarifying.  
‘This house, this town… It’s not in your blood, you know that. You’re a wanderer, just like us. I really want you to think very well about this. Please don’t give up on it before you’ve given it a chance.’  
Tauriel didn’t know what to say. ‘I’ll consider it,’ she finally forced herself to promise. ‘Please go now, before Thranduil gets home. That won’t be long and Legolas and I are already in enough trouble without him seeing you here.’  
Fíli nodded and walked away over the driveway.

Tauriel closed the door and walked back into the living room with a heavy feeling in her gut.  
‘Who was it?’ Legolas asked.  
‘Fíli. Kíli’s brother.’ She immediately told him about the proposal.  
‘Tauriel – ‘  
‘I know,’ she said sharply. ‘It’s ridiculous, I do belong here, I’m crazy if I even consider it, it’s dangerous… Please spare me all that. I have to do what Í want, okay?’  
‘That wasn’t what I was going to say at all,’ said Legolas.  
‘It’s not?’ she asked, baffled.  
‘No, of course not. I know that I can’t make your choices for you. I understand it, actually. Fíli is right: this isn’t how you were born.’  
Tauriel bit her lip. ‘Nothing binds me to this place, except for you,’ she admitted. ‘I never really felt at home here, and I wonder if I can ever feel at home anywhere. Maybe I do belong on the road, forever moving.’  
Legolas swallowed. ‘So you’re leaving?’  
‘I don’t know,’ said Tauriel honestly. ‘I only know that I don’t really feel like I’m giving anything up if I go. I never really valued education or money or anything like that.’  
‘You have to do what makes you happy,’ said Legolas after a short silence.  
‘Are you serious?’  
He nodded. ‘And if you leave, you’d better do it before Thranduil gets home. I don’t think he’ll be happy about it. All those years in which he provided you a home and food and clothes, and now you’re leaving with the people who have threatened the peace and quiet in his town. You don’t wanna hear that tirade, believe me.’  
‘Bad idea, I’m not gonna leave headlong like that. And I’m definitely not gonna leave you with him right now. It’s my fault that he’s mad at us.’

Legolas didn’t try to persuade her, and so they kept sitting in silence, waiting for Thranduil to come back. It didn’t take long. Soon, they heard the backdoor slam shut and footsteps in the hallway.  
‘Why were you at the nomads?’ asked Thranduil as soon as he stepped into the living room.  
‘It’s my fault,’ said Tauriel immediately.  
His cold gaze settled on her and interrogatively, he raised one of his heavy eyebrows.  
Although his gaze made her nervous, she decided to tell him the truth. ‘A while ago I talked with one of them. I thought that he might know more about… About the time before I came here. It felt like we knew each other, but we didn’t know from where. Two weeks ago I found out what it was. I’m from a circus family who once met their group, and then…’ She couldn’t bring herself to tell the whole story, with all its terrible details. ‘And then some things happened,’ she concluded curtly. ‘I didn’t talk to them again after I found out about it, but because they have to leave soon, I wanted to say goodbye.’  
‘Say goodbye?’ Thranduil repeated. Suppressed anger made his voice tremble.  
Tauriel nodded. She felt like she had to account for something. ‘This guy means a lot to me,’ she thus confessed.  
But Thranduil shook his head. ‘I cannot believe that both of you have been misleading me for weeks. All behind my back. What you feel for that boy is not real.’  
That was so immensely unjust that something inside her snapped, and for the first time she knew him, she dared to oppose Thranduil. ‘What do you know of love?’ she asked in a high voice. ‘Nothing! You are cold, loveless, only busy with your job. There is no love in your life. There is no love in you!’   
As soon as she the words had left her mouth, she wished she could take them back. But it was too late.  
Bewilderment, unbelief, anger and hurt flashed speedily across Thranduil’s usually so smug face.   
Tauriel braced herself for an outburst, but the only thing he said as soon as he recovered his voice, was: ‘Go upstairs,’ in the same cold manner as always.  
Tauriel didn’t let her get told that twice. She hurried out of the room and up the stairs, and in her bedroom she tried with all her power not to listen to the arguing voices of Legolas and Thranduil. What they were talking about was none of her business, that was something between the two of them.

While Tauriel mulled over her life as it had been and as she wanted it, she gathered some clothes and other stuff and threw them in a big backpack. Just in case, she told herself, but in the meantime it felt like her subconsciousness had already made a decision.  
When she had packed the most important stuff, she sat down at her desk and started writing a letter to Thranduil to explain everything. She apologized and thanked him for everything he’d done for her, but she also told him why she had decided to leave: that she didn’t belong here, and that she didn’t want to lose Kíli another time, no matter how effusive that might sound. It was difficult to find the right words, but in the end she managed to say everything the way she wanted it, and she decided that it was a good idea to leave the letter behind for Thranduil. That would work better than a straightforward confrontation, she thought, and she owed it to him to not sneak away out of the blue, without any explanation.


	14. The final words

That night she kept tossing and turning in her bed. She couldn’t sleep and desultory thoughts of which she didn’t know whether they were memories or figments of her imagination kept flying around at the edge of her consciousness, just out of reach.  
When the clock downstairs chimed six times, she couldn’t wait any longer. She threw the covers from her and put the clothes on that she had laid ready “just in case”. Then she put her hair in a messy bun, hoisted the big backpack onto her shoulder and snuck out of her room.

‘Tauriel?’ It was Legolas, who softly whispered her name from between the crack in his bedroom door. His hair was put into a messy braid and he was wearing a crooked old t-shirt, but he looked wide awake and Tauriel could see that he, too, hadn’t closed one eye that night.  
He beckoned her to come inside and she reluctantly obeyed.  
‘Are you leaving?’ he asked in a low voice.  
She nodded. ‘I can’t –‘  
‘You don’t have to explain, I understand,’ he assured her. ‘We’ll keep in touch, right?’  
‘Of course.’ She forced herself to keep the tears behind her eyes, and to her relief that worked, even when he set a step forward and put his arms tightly around her. Legolas wasn’t much of a hugger, so this embrace said more than all the words in the world.  
‘Go, quickly,’ he mumbled as he let go of her.  
She nodded again, but before she went, she handed him the letter. ‘Will you give this to Thranduil?’ she asked him. ‘He deserves an explanation.’  
Legolas nodded.  
Tauriel wanted to say something as a goodbye, but didn’t know what, so she walked away from him silently, through the hallway and down the stairs.

Beneath the staircase she held still when she heard voices. Thranduil had gotten up.  
‘You’re awake early,’ she heard him say to Legolas.  
‘Tauriel is gone,’ he answered without beating about the bush. ‘You don’t have to go after her. She’s joining the nomads. I had to give you this.’  
A silence followed, and Tauriel felt that she had to leave, but she couldn’t move.  
‘Legolas?’  
Silence.  
‘Your mother loved you.’  
No “I love you” or “I’m sorry that I couldn’t be a loving father”, but something that expressed his love for his son a thousand times better, Tauriel knew that. Thranduil never said anything about Legolas’ deceased mother. Only at that moment, Tauriel realized that that was not because there was no love in him, but because he missed her too much. Because it was real. Just like her feelings for Kíli. And hopefully, after reading her letter, Thranduil would know that too.  
As quietly as possible she skulked down the hallway to sneak out through the backdoor, There, the dawn was already settling. She’d better hurry. 

‘Tauriel, why – ‘  
She reached out her hand and pressed the stone into Kíli’s. ‘I made you a promise, remember?’  
‘No, it was for you, you have to keep – ‘  
‘I’m coming with you. I shouldn’t be sitting in a house, always in the same village, without ever going anywhere.’  
‘But – ‘  
‘Your mother and uncle are okay with it. You can thank your brother for that later.’  
She saw Thorin approaching and examining her with that proud look of his. ‘So you came?’ he asked Tauriel with his deep, grim voice.  
She saw that he hadn’t expected that, and nodded affirmative.  
All of a sudden, she got squashed from behind in a boisterous embrace.  
‘You came!’ It was Fíli, with an enormous grin on his face. ‘I thought you wouldn’t actually do it!’  
Tauriel smiled at him, hesitatingly. ‘Then you really don’t know me well enough yet.’  
‘You’re out of your mind. Come on,’ said Kíli. He pulled her with him over the camp, where a lot of activity was already going on: horses were put in front of the wagons, remains of a bonfire were cleaned up and the barriers that made up the fencing were taken down.  
But Kíli took her till behind the wagons, to the edge of the forest, where the twilight made them almost invisible to the busy nomads.  
Kíli stepped onto a fallen tree trunk so that his eyes came to the exact same height as hers.  
‘I never want to lose you again,’ he simply said.  
Tauriel didn’t know how to react. Kíli was the only person who had managed to tear down the mental harness that she’d been building so carefully during the last thirteen years, and she hardly knew what to do with her feelings for him, which were scary and new to her. But still she had chosen him, and now there was no way back. A shiver of excitement went down her spine.  
‘Look, the moon.’ For the second time he pointed at a spot behind her head and for the second time she looked around to see the moon appear from behind the clouds.  
‘Another déjà-vu,’ she said, smiling. ‘And I still prefer the stars.’  
‘You do have a point, you know,’ said Kíli.  
Interrogatively, she looked at him.  
‘At first sight, the stars are cold and distant, but you were right. They’re precious and pure. Actually, they’re a lot like you.’  
He came ever closer and the last thought that went through Tauriel was how he was her firemoon: flaming and passionate and the radiant, warm light in the night sky. Then their lips touched each other and she forgot everything around her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all liked this story, thank you so much for taking the time to read it! It means the world to me, lots of love!


End file.
